Hey I've been hearing a LOT of complaints about the gas in NYS and the new fuel additive that the retards in Albany decided to go with. Complaints I've heard include decreased fuel economy, car sputtering, and lack of power. I haven't noticed much of a change in my '89 Bimmer, but that thing's fuel injected and has a skip anyway....

How have you other V6 owners in NY fared with it??? I can't remember when the new additive made it to the gas stations in central NY, so I'm not sure what gas I have in my car's tank(it's been put up for the winter). I'm curious to see what other NY residents think about the gas with the new additive in their V6's, if they're driving them this time of year...

 

To bad I can't find it but read a thread about the NY and new mexico and Florida gas problems with the Mini cooper cars.

Something like the 2002 car could use any gas and ran fine, the 2003 cars with a new prom chip would spit sputter and die in those states when taking off. It was dangerous for pulling out in traffic.

Some reason they could not go back to the 2002 code and the 2003 code was super protected by major safety checks that made it impossible to pull the info.

I saw a gas show once and they said they made like 157 different types of gas as every state, town and city has it own specs for gas. You could drive 10 miles and get totally different gas because of the laws in that area.


Ok gues I found it quicker than I thought.





http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...id=164&tid=185


" OpenSource ECU code - a real need. (Score:5, Informative)
by sbaker (47485) on Friday February 13, @09:19PM (#8276604)
(http:/www.sjbaker.org)
Let me tell you a true story:

The 2002 MINI Cooper S (a **GREAT** car BTW) was delivered with Engine management (ECU) software V1.3.0. It worked fine.

The 2003 MINI Cooper S was delivered with ECU software V1.3.2. We believe the changes were to accomodate the Diesel version of the MINI that was due to appear in Europe - but there may have been other changes too.

v1.3.2 worked well - EXCEPT when the high ambient temperatures of a Texas summer combined with 'Reformulated Gasoline' (not sold in all US States - and not seen in Europe). With that combination of conditions, the car would roll forwards 10 feet and stall if you accellerated moderatly hard from a standing start. This came to be known as 'the stumbles'. When it strikes, it can actually be quite dangerous because you could in all likelyhood be stalled out right in front of an oncoming vehicle.

Both ECU electronics and engine mechanics are IDENTICAL between the 2002 and 2003 models - so this had to be a software bug.

It took a LONG time to figure out why some cars were stumbling. The owners' clubs first noticed that only 2003 cars did it - then we discovered this was only happening in the summer - and only in Texas and (IIRC) Florida - but then we heard that it wasn't happening in New Mexico. So we initially ruled out the 'high temperature' theory. However, New Mexico doesn't have reformulated gas.

So when we realised that reformulated Gas is sold in Texas and Florida - but not in New Mexico, we thought that might be the issue...but then we found that it didn't happen in New York (reformulated gas - but no high temperatures).

The whole thing was also confused by the fact that the MINI's ECU has adaptive software. When we had a few days of cool temperatures, the problem DIDN'T go away - and you had to run three tankfuls of non-reformulated gas through the car before the ECU would un-learn the stumble.

It's a tribute to the 'community' spirit of MINI owners (and lots of long threads on several mailing lists) that we ever figured out WTF was happening to our cars at all.

It took six months to pursuade BMW/MINI that there was truly a problem (by which time temperatures had dropped and we couldn't reproduce the problem) - and another 6 months for them to fix it and get a software upgrade out.

Meanwhile, the 2002 MINI's were still running V1.3.0 just fine in all temperatures and all gasoline types - and 2003 MINI's were stumbling all over the place.

Owners of 2003 machines were begging the dealerships to downgrade their cars back to the 2002 code - but dealerships were either unable or unwilling to do that - we're still not quite sure why - but it's likely that the security system in the MINI's ECU somehow prevents that.

This is a CLASSIC case where we'd have *killed* to have an OpenSource solution so we could fix the problem ourselves...either by simply reprogramming our 2003 cars with 2002 software (kindly donated by a 2002 owner)...or by doing a 'diff' and figuring out what was actually wrong.

Even without the source code, it would have been possible to do a binary dump from one car to another - but for the fact that these ECU's are protected by a barrage of 'challenge/response' tests (the details of which are a closely guarded secret). If your laptop fails to provide the correct response to the challenge, the car literally shuts down all software functions for THREE HOURS!! This effectively foils any effort to do a trial-and-error test to reverse-engineer the challenge/response system.

So - whilst it MIGHT be dangerous to allow people to randomly hack their cars, there are also dangers in preventing them from doing so.

www.sjbaker.org"

 

damn thats actually pretty interesting

 

What's the name of the new additive? We have some oxygenated crap in NJ during the winter; basically I use twice as much gas to drive the same distance- so I don't see how it lowers pollution. And then there's that whole "contamination of drinking water" thing... lovely.

 

TomP:

I'm not sure on the name, but what you describe about your gas mileage sounds like what we're experiencing in NY. My girl friend, for example, has a 97 NEON and she now goes through 1 1/2 tanks of gas in a week's time frame, when she used to go a week and a half on 1 tank. Car is in good running order, and she uses midgrade (89 octane). I've got to do some research on this new additive and see what I can learn about it...who knows, maybe there's a way to negate the effects that the new additive is having on fuel economy. I'll let you know if I find anything.

 

man, I hope we dont get that stuff here. I also dont see how using more gas lowers polution. Plus the rising cost of gas makes it about unable to drive anywhere.

But this could be why my car went from getting 21-23mpg to the 17 it has gotten this past weekish.

 

Who knows maybe that additive is suppose to do just that. Lower your gas mileage so the company and state get more money???

I know in Ohio 65 cents of every gallon goes to the state.

 

That good gas program is on the history channel right now.
Sure it will play again later today.

 

okay, what I've found so far is sketchy, but here's what I've got: it is oxygenated fuel (no surprise there), the name is polyisobutyl or something close to that. Here's where the starts.....the additive is supposed the "even out the size of gasoline molecules" for more even combustion, allegedly giving engines 10% more horsepower and 20% more fuel economy while cutting emmissions by 70%. I don't know what you guys think about that, but I think it's a bunch of propaganda. I'm trying to find what I hope will be more honest/accurate info on the State's web page, but haven't found anything there yet....there's got to be an agency that I can get the info from....

 

Gas, fuel oil, diesel, premium, mid grad and so on all travel down the same pipe line. There is some mixing between the two and that mix is sold off to "?" and everyones shares the pipe line, all gas is the same, just once at the tanker filling station, then each company adds its own additives.

Like making mixed drinks that don't "mix" they all flow down the same pipe together in layers.